It's a cool December day, but there are still card games happening in Gucheng Park.

The Year of the Tiger

Yes, it’s not  the real lunar “Year of the Tiger” New Year’s Day for quite a while yet, but this sparkling card (take note, not Hallmark!) seems a good way to send New Year’s greetings and bridge the gap between East and West.

On a rainy December afternoon, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower is reflected on the east wall of the Shanghai Museum.

The Chinese are the most ‘gift-giving’ people I have ever met. The Athabascans in Alaska run a close second on gift-overload, but they seem to weigh down guests just once: on departure. The Chinese use every opportunity to give.

Next, Christmas. Since practically every Christmas decoration and ornament is Made in China, we were reminded of the up-coming holiday even before Halloween [which the Chinese have begun to recognize as well—mostly in the form of Haunted House venues sponsored by Westerners; I have to assume: Americans. We saw a couple of posters in our neighborhood in early October encouraging us to take one of the ax-wielding, spike-through-the-head roles come the 31st.]. But Christmas. By November 1st, one narrow street near school leading into Old Town from Renmin Lu was packed with 6-foot tall artificial Christmas trees, garlands of huge, colorful balls, so much gold tinsel it was blinding, and ornaments hung from ropes strung across the road. In some restaurants in the French Concession, the waitresses wore Santa hats. A musical loop of Jingle Bells and Frosty the Snowman played everywhere. And yet, none of the people we got to know very well even celebrate Christmas.

Religion doesn’t enter the picture: I never heard an allusion to religion from any of our colleagues, with the exception of a school textbook passage they assigned their students for memorization—a description of Christmas celebrations in England which included the line, “Christmas, when they celebrate the birth of Christ . . . .” The students always mispronounced Christ, giving it the short i of Christmas. I did actually hear two references from my students: one, when asked whom she most admired [most of her classmates answered Kobe Bryant, or their parents, or Mao] wrote “God, because he never shows his real face.” I have no idea what that means. The second student asked me if I had a Bible because he wanted to read one; he was a seasoned skeptic at the age of 16, his face displaying suspicious disbelief. So Christmas, like Thanksgiving, like Halloween, does not disturb the Chinese calendar except to inflate their GNP. Oh, and Hallmark’s bottom line as they have cornered the market on Christmas and New Year’s cards in China, in Chinese. Who is that CEO? Give him a bonus!

And that brings us to Gifts. We were in Shanghai from August 24th to December 16th and in that time, the people we met found reason to give us gifts at least a dozen times. We received sets of towels, wash cloths and soap dishes (one set for each of us); a four tiered box of moon cakes; bags of pears; bags of apples, of green soy pretzel-like snacks; Costco-sized boxes of chocolate-frosted, mousse-filled small cakes (two boxes for each of us); embroidered, satin pillow cases; some Qing Dynasty embroidery; sets of chopsticks and placemats; ceramic bowls; a blue-and-white traditional tea set; silk scarves, a calligraphy set . . . I could go on, but this much is surely more than enough. The Chinese love the ceremony, the act of giving gifts. Christmas seems just made for them, and yet they are sensible and space out their gift-giving through the year, through people’s arrivals and departures, for Teacher’s Day, the mid-Autumn Festival, National Day, to welcome someone coming to dinner at your home.

A few final details we observed:

1) The Chinese do not wrap their gifts; they are presented, bare, in a fancy

shopping bag.

2) They do not open gifts given to them, in front of the giver, but they expect

Westerners to do so.

3) They neither write thank-you notes nor expect others to.

4) When anyone in an office (I assume any closed space—other than a public one

like a bus) eats a cookie, or opens a piece of gum or snacks on a cracker, it

is good manners—it is essential—to offer the same to everyone present. It

reminded me of my usual reprimand to a South Kent student who popped a

piece of candy surreptitiously into his mouth during class: “Do you have

enough for everyone? Otherwise, spit it out.”

5) Never give four of anything; that is a very unlucky number as it sounds like

the word for ‘death.’ We were counseled that the usual gift to a

luncheon hostess is fruit or food. So: give 5 fancy, imported Florida oranges,

3 big, handsome mangoes, and 3 small packages of luxury chocolates in a

shopping bag—and receive a string of pearls, a Yixing tea pot,

and some traditional Chinese mud people figurines! And then try to shrink

into the sofa cushions behind you.

6) Gifts are, obviously, often much more extravagant than those given to mere

acquaintances in our U. S. experience.

So that’s gift-giving in China, better expressed as gift-receiving in China. A more generous people would be hard to find. Or more friendly and out-going, more curious, more industrious. China seems a logical place to have a holiday like Christmas to be enjoyed by a loving people. Their day simply would not be named Christmas. Perhaps it could be “Grace Day.” Or, better yet, “All-giving.”

At some time in the fall or winter of that year, they have a second bout of training, this time for just three days and at a different site. Woody and I were invited to go along and observe some of this training on their first day. We met the students at the school early on a Monday morning and rode on one of their buses about one and a half hours to the site—which was still in Shanghai—that’s how big the city and its outskirts are.

We had seen advertisements on the bus video monitor all fall of a resort area called Oriental Land. The pictures showed happy families swimming, dancing, playing golf, water skiing, having a sauna—all having a lovely holiday in a luxurious setting. So we were stunned when the buses turned into a gate labeled Oriental Land—Family Resort. Turns out there are several different venues in Oriental Land, one of which is a quasi-military base, complete with shooting ranges, a ‘pretend’ aircraft carrier, uniformed PLA officers and dormitories which may be pretty close to barracks.

The dormitory section of Oriental Land bears some resemblance to “Fraternity Row” on a picturesque U.S. college campus.

The interiors reminded me of summer camp cabins: bare-walled rooms, no furniture other than wooden beds with storage underneath the lift-up mattress supports and small folding stools for sitting, and Spartan bathrooms. Five high schools in Shanghai gathered there at the same time, prepared to compete in housekeeping chores, shooting, marching, and I don’t know what-all. As soon as the buses arrived, the students were paraded past storage sheds where they were handed camouflage clothes and then marched to their assigned dorms. Our boys were housed in “American House”; each dorm was named for a country.

The students getting their camouflage outfits after being sized up by their army trainer . . .

. . . receiving instructions on the proper use of the uniform,

. . . and testing the fit.

They were assigned rooms—about 8 to a room, just like at summer camp—where they quickly donned their uniforms. A few minutes later a uniformed military man came in to teach them how to make a bed. The standard did not require a quarter to bounce on the bed, as the US Navy specifies, but the sheets had to be smooth, the duvets folded exactly in thirds, with the stripes lined up and the pillows centered on the duvets at the head of the bed. The officers had a sense of humor and were pleasant to the kids, but they were strict in seeing the instructions carried out.

The class teacher told us that most of these girls never make their own beds at home, so they have to learn from the officer.

The opening ceremonies [Chinese: big on ceremonies, remember?] took place in an open amphitheater. It was cold out. It was frigid! Each class in Guang Ming (8 of them) had its own banner, marched together, and sat together. This was a bonding, team-building experience as well.

Three of the eight Guang Ming classes lined up behind their banners.

They sat in orderly lines while a couple of groups of female students entertained them with dance routines. The Guang Ming girls went first. Unfortunately they had chosen as their outfits rather skimpy tops and leggings.

An unlikely sight at boot camp.

And more unfortunately, to my mind, they had chosen to do their sort-of step aerobics routine to an American hip-hip song—is that what it is called? Something that sounded like Madonna. It just seemed wrong! Only one other school provided dancers; they, happily, wore long-sleeved, heavy weight t-shirts, and pants—and danced, or exercised, to a Chinese song about Haibao, the blue mascot for Expo 2010. Now that seemed more appropriate, but I am probably out in left field when it comes to judging appropriate dress or behavior in China.

Are those army issue, soldier?

After the dancers ‘welcomed’ everyone, a select corps of students from each school ceremonially hoisted the six school flags in unison, and then everyone sang “The March of the Volunteers” as the national flag was raised. There were speeches from the front—Heads of schools stood in a line on stage, pledges were read and repeated with fists up-raised; one Guang Ming student felt faint and had to be sequestered in a trailer nearby. [That happened at Nanjing, too. Perhaps when you are dealing with 350 students, the law of averages says at least one student has to get sick.]

The now-familiar oath and fist-salute. The Principals of all the schools stand at attention on the stage.

As soon as the welcoming was complete, the students marched to the mess-hall to “hurry up and wait.” When we left after lunch, many were still standing outside, in the bitter cold, in formations. You could distinguish one school from another because their camouflage was different: different colors or different patterns.

Some of the other schools showing their colors.

On the bus, I had asked both boys and girls, separately, if they were looking forward to this training. They all answered that they were. First of all, they would miss classes, but more than that, they were looking forward to learning to shoot guns. Ouch.

So the question is: what is this training for, exactly? There is no draft in China; very few of these university-bound students will ever serve in the military. But apparently there is the concern that the youth are too soft, that they give up too easily; they are so coddled by their families as the only child that most of them have never made a bed, have never had to do a chore, are unable to stand on their own two feet. It is said that the Chinese treat their children like little kings and queens; they have just one or the other. This military training is designed to toughen up “the youth of today.” In fact, setting aside the cold, I think they quite enjoyed the experience.

Mao’s Special Pork, mushrooms, and soy beans with chilies at Di Shui Dong, a Hunanese restaurant named after a cave in the Chairman’s home village

Stuffed Eggplant with Baby Bok Choy, Shanghai Style

Mongolian Hotpot, partially devoured

Sichuan beef with dried red chilies

If you thought the names of our students were odd, you won’t believe the names of dishes on a menu. “Duck pieces of fish round to stew at the blood.” “Salt meat Steaming Pseudobagrus fulvidraco.” “Cut the belly sharp in vain.” “Paradise is new and plain.” “Acid bean chicken.” It’s impossible to know what you will get unless the menu also has pictures; then you can scope it out and hope your eye is good for identifying food and how it will be cooked and then served. One picture shows a dish of chopped up greens with one red pepper on top; it is called “Turnip burns the meat to stew.”

Fragile Beef served at A Yingbao

The Chinese believe that food should be pleasing in three ways: it must please the eye; it must please the nose; and it must please the palate. [I don’t know how stinky tofu got to be so popular. One of my students told me, “You will hate the smell of it; it’s really bad. But once you eat it, you’ll not regret it.” I don’t know why you’d ever want to taste something that smells so bad!]

Mutton with Peppers at Guyi Hunan another popular Hunanese spot

Pleasing to the eye and to the taste – Duck and Taro along with “acupuncture needle wild arcaenum” fungus

Everything on this platter, “Orioles Singing in the Willows,” was prepared using tea in some way. The name alludes to a classical poem.

Another tea-based Hangzhou scene, this one named “The farmer with his harvest on a raft.”

A Shanghainese/fusion crispy chicken with steamed buns

We eat dinner out about 4 times a week. We have probably tried 40 different restaurants; only one or two would we not return to. There are hundreds of restaurants in the center of Shanghai alone—to say nothing of the outlying neighborhoods like ours, or the French Concession. Entertaining dinner guests is almost always done in a restaurant; the apartments are too small for entertaining. Eating has continued to be a highlight of our time here and to account for a minimal part of our expenditures.

A banquet dinner in Weihai, Shandong Province, during our October holidays. Weihai is deservedly renowned for its fresh seafood.

Some of the convoy parked at our lunch stop

After two service area stops along the way, we stopped outside Nanjing and ate lunch at a weapons factory. Truly, the dining room was for the factory workers; the faculty ate in a smaller, upstairs dining room that was usually used by the factory management. Exactly what weapons they manufacture there was classified information, but we spotted a missile replica outside in the courtyard as we were leaving.

Our next stop was the Monument to the Revolutionary Martyrs where the anticipated ceremony took place. As with every Chinese monument, the more steps leading up to it—the higher in the sky it is—the better. So the guides blew their whistles, the 300+ students lined up by class section—girls in front, boys behind—and they climbed the steps to the monument.

The ten sections of Senior 3 organizing into lines . . .

… and climbing up to the monument,

where they lined up for the ritual.

Once there, they lined up front and center before the huge stone sculpture of a hero, set up microphones and speakers, arranged banners and displayed flags at the base of the monument, placed an enormous floral wreath to the martyrs there, and began the ceremony.

The “honor guard” holding the national flag, with the Guang Ming banner on display in the background

All of this took place in a very public space; there were many tourists there, watching the pomp and circumstance, some smiling and amused, some somewhat miffed by their own experience being pushed aside by the school’s. Students, and then several faculty from the school—including Woody—made short speeches about the milestone of achieving adulthood, about accepting the responsibilities that come with privilege (sound familiar to you there at South Kent?).

The students listened to the speeches with the typical range of teen-aged attention: total boredom and inattention to cynical half-attention to apparent semi-consciousness to focused, careful listening—the nearer the front of the line, the more rapt the student. At the end of the ceremony, all ten class monitors lined up in front and Mr. Mu, the Principal, gave each representative a stack of fairly thin booklets for the members of his/her class; each booklet contained the laws of the People’s Republic of China. This was a government publication, I think. It wasn’t little and red; it was medium-sized, and white with red lettering on the cover. At this point, one banner bearer started to pass out; he was quickly replaced by a substitute and led off to the side to put his head between his knees.

Having received the law of the land, the class monitors stand at attention while Principal Mu looks on. Note the sagging standard bearer in the background.

Two student leaders from the class read a pledge to follow the laws, which the rest of the students repeated, with fists raised.

One hand holds the law, the other pledges loyalty with a clenched fist.

As soon as the students marched around the monument and down the steps, another school group—this one not in uniforms but clearly high school students—marched in behind them with their own huge, identical floral wreath, placed it, and began, we assume, their coming of age ceremony.

Our students descended the steps to a landing half-way down to the bottom and there lined up by class again. One class at a time, they went further down, put on red 5-point-star graduation caps and had their pictures taken.

Yes, the hats are meant to call to mind the Chinese flag.

Then they tossed the hats into a pile on a tarp, the next class was marched down, donned the hats, had their picture taken and so on. This part of the ritual really attracted smiles and stares from strangers nearby.

The students were allowed about 20 minutes of free time before they had to find the buses again and head for the next stop.

This stop was the Nanjing Massacre Museum, a very dark—literally and psychologically—place, very oppressive; I would call the message over-kill, but perhaps that’s not possible. I have never been to the Holocaust Museum, so I wonder how the presentation compares to that. I felt this museum had way too much repetition, way too much text, and endless rooms and archives and exhibits showing the losses in umpteen different forms. Photographs, recordings, water drops that triggered photographs of the dead, lights on the floor of a pitch black room that represented the number killed, dioramas of massacre and rape scenes, holograms of scenes, rooms of skeletons, archeological digs of skeletons, walkways through lighted missiles hanging from the ceilings, paths through massive sculptures of scenes of the massacre, walkways around waterways around wall reliefs of the massacre, etc. And most of it was in dimly, barely lit rooms. It was typically Chinese in that you were forced to move in a prescribed direction throughout; there is no deviating from the flow of the visitors; you moved as a long dragon past exhibits which you could not get close enough to read. This critique was probably overkill.

After that visit, we drove to our lodgings in the middle of the city—the girls in one hotel, the boys in another nearby. They were then allowed to go out and get some dinner. The hotels were right next to a huge pedestrian mall—rather like a state fair midway, with its colored lights overhead and cotton candy and hot dogs, but it also had many hotpot restaurants, noodle shops, McDonalds, KFC, and hundreds of stores. The students had to be in their rooms at 8:30. Which, amazingly, they were. One girl developed a fever in the middle of the night and was taken to the hospital. [No one in China has a ‘family physician;’ if you are sick, you go to the hospital. And sit and wait.] I gather the doctor gave her aspirin and sent her back to the hotel. She seemed fine the next day, as giggly at her freedom as the rest of them.

The next morning we left the hotels at 7:30 and visited the Linggu Temple Park and then Dr. Sun Yat Sen’s mausoleum which was, not surprisingly, reached by a climb up 397 steps.

The long ascent to the Sun Yat Sen mausoleum

The students could wander up there in the clouds for more than two hours. Several sat and played cards on a bench.

Typical boy pastime on a class trip

As on bus trips at South Kent, the students all conked out for the trip home. We screeched around one humongous accident, but most of the students slept even through that. They were perhaps now jaded adults— they were, at the least, exhausted ones.

When I asked my students a few days later what they had most enjoyed about the trip, they said two things: the time spent with their friends and no family, and the fresh air of Nanjing.

Blue skies and fresh air

This could be what happens to your express envelopes to Shanghai. These men are sorting the packages out, tossing them about on the ground, in the middle of a huge construction site along a major road. We walked by them on our way to school one morning.

For a start, food costs less. It costs less in the stores and even less than that at street-side. For example, vegetables in a store are ridiculously inexpensive: enough greens for two dinners, 30 cents; snow peas for two dinners, 50 cents; mushrooms for three dinners, 60 cents. Nine native tangerines in the food store cost 40 cents, 12 big imported oranges from a truck along the street 80 cents, 4 bananas, 30 cents. Two and a half pounds of Thai rice cost $4.00, a loaf of bread, $1.10. A pint of milk is 60 cents, 13 eggs—90 cents. One and a half liters of OJ costs $3.00, 4 liters of water–$1.00. A box of great cookies, anywhere from 30 cents to $1.20—dinner out for two, between $10 and $25 (that’s with about 6 different dishes, plus beer). And Tsing Tao beer—18 oz. bottle: 65 cents.

An average dinner at “A Yingbao,” the best of our nearby restaurants: $15.00 total

Random items we have reason to know about:

Socks: $2.00

Wash cloth: .50

Hand towel: 1.25

Bath towel: 4.00

Set of sheets: 9.00

Big can of WD-40: 6.00

3-outlet surge protector 6.00

New Balance shoes: 45.00 – 130.00—so that’s not so different.

Clothes run the gamut from very expensive to very inexpensive. The retail stores have generally higher prices than in the U.S, I think. Unfortunately, I’m not much of a buyer of expensive clothes at home, so I’m not a good source for that comparison. But in a medium-priced store here [there are, of course, all the usual designer stores here: Gucci, Prada . . .], dresses cost $100-300. A fine-weight wool, cabled cardigan costs about $100 in a department store; the same sweater just outside the store on a table, as a special: $25. In a regular department store, scarves cost about $25-50. What look to be the exact same scarves, for sale in the entrance to the metro or in carts along the street, cost $2.00-$4.00. Before we went to Nanjing, we tried to buy wool watch caps as it had gotten very cold. We went into some stores, one that sold Columbia sporting goods, and the hats were about $30. We gave up, headed back to the apartment, passed a man in the underground with a tarp spread on the floor holding fleece-lined wool caps—bought 2 for $7.50. Men’s sheepskin gloves cost Woody $7.50 from a cart on our street. A more interesting detail is the line-up of goods for sale along the street, especially after dark: carts clustered under any available street or traffic light. When we are out after dark, walking to the metro station, we cross a small bridge over Suzhou Creek. At one end of the bridge, on the sidewalk under a traffic light are the following goods: a wheeled cart of fresh flowers [we buy huge lilies each week: 5 stems of multiple blossoms and buds—which always open: total, $3.50-5.00.

It varies week-to-week; we never bargain because the young woman who sells them is so friendly and cute; she greets us every time she sees us, whether we are buying or not]; a large flat-bed wooden wagon full of bananas; a stand of puffy slippers of bright colors, decorated with rabbits or bears or some other cute animal; a cart of socks and scarves, an open wooden box on the ground, full of pirated DVDs; a permanent stand of insoles and socks, a stand of cutesy hot water ‘bottles’ that are basically square pillows with a stopper on the top; and a tarp on the ground covered with leather shin-guards and gloves for motor-cyclists. You have to weave your way through these stands to cross the bridge.

Motorcycle garb for sale on a slow day

There is a store called Carrefours that we were alerted to on arrival; our colleagues told us that this was where all the Westerners shop: western goods at Chinese prices. I think it may be like Wal-Mart. We were taken there [there is no convenient metro line or bus] in the first weeks. That is where we bought a few needed items: the WD-40 for an obnoxiously squeaky entrance door; two small side lamps because the apartment is dark, dark; light bulbs; extra sheets; stationery items; a backpack/book bag [$30.00]; a shoulder bag [$8.00]; and in the food section, some good ground coffee.

Check-out at Carrefours

Transportation. The metro to anywhere is 60 cents; the city bus is 40 cents. A flight to Wei Hai (an hour and a half flight) and back costs $250. Taxi meters start at $1.80 [late at night, the minimum is $2.50]; the average ride, even across town would cost maybe $3.00. A 25 minute trip to the airport cost us $6.50.

For fun: 500 grams of wool yarn from Australia, $10.50. [That’s cheap!] Hallmark greeting cards, in Chinese [how smart is that company!], $.80 – 1.50. Admission to museums and gardens, $0.00 – 6.00, on average. Performance of Placido Domingo and a Chinese opera singer, $80.00 for seats pretty high up in the stadium; seats in the ‘orchestra’ went for more than 10 times that—and there were people around us who never looked up from their cell phones the whole night, but texted their friends apparently, and there were men behind us talking on their phones throughout.

Shanghai Indoor Stadium before the Placido Domingo concert

Tickets to a good, touristy acrobat/juggler/Cirque de Soleil-type show cost $28. Popcorn, sweet, not salty, $4.00. Ouch.

Essentials: internet installation and monthly charge here in the apartment, $45.00, and $18.00. Apartment, we have no idea as the school pays for that, but utilities per month are about $12.00. In cities other than Shanghai, a very nice, very large, 2-bedroom apartment can be rented for about $170 a month. Laundry load, washed/dried/folded, $3.00. Pants or shirt dry-cleaned, $1.25. A Honda costs ~ $40,000, with the license which is often as expensive as the car. Kleenex packs, $.07 each. [They’re essential.]

Finally, income. We only know about teachers and policemen [our colleagues and their husbands. The first two things a Chinese person will ask you are these: “How old are you?” “What is your salary?”] We didn’t ask, but they told us anyway. A full-time teacher makes about $600 a month; a policeman makes about $11,000 a year.

That was all she wrote. Katy bar the door.